Does Stefano Domenicali Know What Fans Want?
As the CEO of Formula One, Stefano Domenicali is under a lot of pressure. Part of his job is to ensure that the sport continues to grow and progress whilst making decisions to improve the entertainment over the weekend. It can't be an easy job but some of his comments across this season have put him under fire from F1 fans.
Out Of Touch With Young Fans
One of the things that Domenicali keeps circling back to is what younger fans want from the sport. It's how he's justifying the changes that he's making.
Domenicali says that from the data, young people don't want to watch a full race anymore. They tend to watch the race highlights. He believes that the new generation of F1 fans don't have the attention span for an hour and a half race.
It's easy to argue though that younger fans might be more interested in a full length race if there was on track overtakes that made the weekend interesting. It's part of the reason why he keeps pushing the idea for more sprint races. Shorter races that he believes young people will be more interested in.
Even More Sprint Races
Sprint races got introduced in 2021 as a way to give fans more racing on the weekend. Taking away two practice sessions in exchange for two competitive sessions. In theory, it didn't sound like a bad plan. Especially if there's a close championship fight. Those extra eight points could change a lot. In practice though, it's hard to see how successful the sprint weekends have been.
F1 has faced a problem over the last few years. The regulations haven't allowed close racing. This year, we're seeing a huge disparity in the engines. So even though the cars can follow each other for longer, we're still not getting a lot of on-track battles.
Sprint races haven't helped that. If anything, they highlight the huge issue is F1 is having. We're not seeing on track overtakes. And the ones we do get are sometimes out of the drivers hands. Overall, it feels processional and predictable. Instead of providing more entertainment, it's given fans another reason to criticise the sport.
The complaints are falling on deaf ears though because they aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Instead, an extra four sprint weekends have been added to the 2027 calendar. That brings the total up to 10.
Even after five years, it still feels like F1 are trying to figure out the best tracks to place these sprints. The addition of the sprint to Monaco hasn't exactly gone down well with fans. It's a bizarre choice but one that seems in line with Domenicali's vision for F1, which includes wanting to have every weekend become a sprint. It seems so far from what the fans of the sport are saying that it's hard to believe this is an idea that the CEO of the sport wants to go ahead with.
F1 for Entertainment More Than Sport
The drivers have complained about how they feel that overtakes are less about driver input now and more about their battery. They're not complaints that Domenicali has wanted to act on though. Instead, in a press briefing, Domenicali had said that "no one is interested in how you drive your car". Essentially saying that fans don't care how the on track action happens. As long as they see overtakes, they'll be happy.
There are two problems there though. Firstly, we still aren't getting many overtakes on track. And secondly, fans do care about how overtakes are done. There are constant conversations across social media about how impressive certain overtakes are, how much skill was involved. And to a certain extent, F1 does realise that because they even have a fan voted award for overtake of the month.
Those comments from Domenicali make it feel as though he wants F1 to move away from being a sport and have its main focus be entertainment. There's no doubt that sport should be entertaining for fans. it should captivate the way and make them want to follow the whole season. But that shouldn't be at the cost of the integrity of the sport. Artifical overtakes and unhappy drivers shouldn't be the way forward. It's not sustainable way to grow Formula One.
No one can take away from the fact that Domenicali has helped F1 grow exponentially. The fanbase has grown, the sponsorships are bigger and the sport is on a trajectory that it's never seen before.
But it's important that we don't lose the heart of the sport amongst all the money that is coming in and that we don't ostracise a whole sub-section of fans in the quest of finding new ones. Right now, though, it feels like Domenicali is moving further and further away from what fans actually want and is happy to follow his own game plan.